75 Things A Man Should Be Able To Do
by Solo Ensemble
Summary: Ryan/Kelly fluff!story based on Esquire's list with the same name as the title. Just some good fluffy fun under the guise of something dramatic. Keyword: FLUFF. :-P
1. Chapter 1

Title: 75 Things A Man Should Be Able To Do

Author: Humatheguma

Chapter: 1

Rating: PG

Pairing/Character: Ryan/Kelly, ensemble

Spoilers: None

Warnings: fluff under the guise of something more; at times OOC

Chapter Summary: Ryan and Kelly have a tense conversation by the vending machines, all Dwight-and-Angela-like.

Author's Note: This is based on Esquire Magazine's list of 75 things a man should be able to do. I plotted a chapter for each item on the list. Some chapters are shorter and fluffier, others are longer and more substantial. There may be some OOC moments just because this is a romantic story, and I will never be fully convinced that Ryan Howard knows how to be romantic. :-P I may have fudged up some details among the other characters just to make it fit better for this story, but all such changes will be made clear in the chapters. There are 75 items on the list with one chapter per item, so this story should be about 72 chapters long.

**Give advice that matters in one sentence. **

**[…Sex. Sex. We had sex.]**

He was sitting in the break room by himself with a can of Diet Coke and the morning paper – Business section, obviously, even though the news about the economic downturn made him want to curl into the fetal position and suck his thumb – when she walked in.

Ryan's gaze flicked up to hers immediately, all thoughts of American Express's requested $3.5 billion bailout forgotten, and Kelly stopped abruptly. He could see her eyes dart to the side and knew she was weighing her options. After a few seconds she tipped her chin up and strode into the room, pointedly heading straight for the vending machine.

Ryan eyed her back, noticing how stiff her shoulders were under the dark purple cardigan she wore. He took a sip from the can and set it down again, noticing how she visibly cringed at the metallic sound.

"So you're going to be completely awkward around me from now until whenever one of us stops working here?"

He could see her reflection in the glass and saw Kelly square her jaw. "I'm not completely awkward."

"My mistake," Ryan allowed smoothly, crossing his arms over the table. "I thought practically running out of the room when you saw me in here showed a hint of awkwardness. Just a little."

Her lips contorted into a sneer and the sight surprised him for a second. He was used to Kelly's smiles, not her sneers. "Me, running from you? Please, Ryan – you only wish."

There was an edge of bitterness to her voice, and he looked away as she jiggled two quarters in her hand. With a heavy sigh, Ryan pushed himself up from the table and walked around it over to where she stood. Kelly went entirely still, her back ramrod straight, so he slipped his hands into his pockets and watched her shoulders relax a little, presumably because at least she knew he wouldn't touch her.

"We have to talk about it sometime."

Her fingers tightened around the quarters pressed into her palm. "I don't _have_ to do anything. Especially not because you say so."

He wasn't used to this. Frankly, because he never thought it was possible that she'd be this way. Ryan was so used to Kelly being her typical smitten-kitten self around him that now that she was freezing him out and refusing to deal with him, he had no idea how to proceed. It made him angry, it made him reckless, and it made him stupid – three words he rarely used to describe himself.

"Kelly, we slept together."

She didn't say anything.

"Twice."

He heard the hard clink of metal as she snapped her wrist, focusing hard on the candy lined up in front of her.

Ryan tapped his foot restlessly on the carpet. "We can't just ignore that."

"I'm not ignoring anything," she fired back, glaring at him. "I'm figuring out what I need to do and I'm taking care of it. You don't fit into the equation, Ryan. So drop it and leave me alone."

"Really." The corner of his mouth curled downward in disgust. "I don't fit into the equation. You could have let me know that when you let me come up to your place after Poor Richard's, or last night when-"

They heard giggling and a rusty chuckle and from the corner of his eye, Ryan saw Jim and Pam enter the break room. They stopped and looked at the two of them standing rigidly by the vending machines, instantly wary, and Ryan cleared his throat.

"You should get the Sour Patch Kids. Definitely. They have a new flavor out and everything."

Kelly nodded as if she was actually considering this and Jim and Pam, satisfied and once more at ease, slipped back out and presumably into the kitchen where they could talk and giggle alone. As soon as they were gone, Kelly glared at his reflection.

"Smooth, Ryan. Next time, you wanna try keeping your voice down?"

"It worked, didn't it?" he asked, but he still kept an eye on the door. Dear God, they were becoming Dwight and Angela…

She closed her eyes and let out a small, sad sigh, the kind he never would have even thought her capable of. "Just leave me alone, Ryan."

"No."

Kelly almost whirled around and faced him, but couldn't quite bring herself to do that and settled for shooting him a bewildered, beseeching look through the glass. "Why not?"

Amazingly, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and had the nerve to look unsure. "Because I don't know how," he finally admitted.

"It's real easy, I swear."

"Kelly-"

"No, Ryan. I'm not doing this again. I'm not."

"Fine." He pulled his hands from his pockets and planted them on his hips, watching her eyes dart there at the movement. "What are you going to do?"

"That's none of-"

"What. Are you going. To do." He waited a minute and when she didn't reply, Ryan rested a hand on the corner of the machine and turned slightly so he could see her profile. She didn't look up from the Famous Amos cookie packages.

"Kel, look. I – I know we didn't plan on this." She snorted and he rolled his eyes. "Okay, so _you_ didn't plan on this. I was actually pretty aggressive about it, fine."

She didn't say anything and let him continue.

"But it happened – twice – and-"

"Will you stop reminding me of that? That it was twice?!"

He pursed his lips together and kept quiet for a few seconds before pushing on. "And I know I really messed things up for you. And you're trying to ignore me and figure this out on your own, but you don't have to. I was there, too. And even though you don't want to, that doesn't really matter, because we _have_ to talk about it."

Kelly kept her arms folded over her chest and didn't speak for so long that Ryan was about to give up and storm off back to reception, but then she rubbed her forehead and let out a sigh.

"I'm not being fair to Darryl. None of this – is fair to him. He doesn't deserve it."

She braved a glance up at him just in time to catch Ryan rolling his eyes, and her temper flared. "What, Ryan? You really wanna be that way? You don't care about any of this, do you?"

"About Darryl?" he challenged, brows raised. "No. I don't care about him. I don't give a shit about Darryl-"

"You're such an asshole, Ryan Bailey Howard!"

It was weird that he actually liked it when she used his full name while angry. Very weird. "Yeah? Why? Because I don't care about your boyfriend's feelings?"

He practically sneered the word – _boyfriend_ – because he could remember a time when that word was reserved exclusively for him, as much as he had hated it. "Well, I don't. I'm selfish that way."

"You don't have to tell me," she grumbled.

"I just care about you and what you're going to do – and what we're going to do," Ryan continued quietly, a little stunned that he meant it so sincerely. "Kel, you don't want to be with Darryl. You never would have slept with me if-"

That did it. She smacked a hand against the other side of the vending machine and turned a murderous glare on him. "Don't tell me what I do or don't want – you don't know _anything_ about that."

He surrendered immediately, actually seeming to recognize that after his stunts this past year upon getting the job at corporate, she'd changed considerably and maybe, just maybe, he couldn't read her as well as he used to.

After a long pause, during which she just stared at him and dared him to be an asshole some more, Kelly finally turned and looked at the candy bar row in the machine.

"…I'm going to have to break up with him," she said quietly. "The first time, I thought it was okay. It was just a one time thing, it was a mistake, it didn't matter."

She didn't see him flinch at the word 'mistake,' a word he'd sometimes used to describe their pre-Valentine's day hook up.

"But the second time…" Kelly shook her head and folded her arms around herself. "That's not fair to him. He deserves better than that, better than someone who'll do that to him. I have to break up with him."

It was the best news Ryan had heard all day and he tried not to look too pleased when he nodded slowly. "Okay."

He was almost proud of himself: okay was such an acquiescing, bland, non-committal word. Much better than, say, smirking and hissing, "yesssss."

Stupid Darryl.

She didn't seem to take notice of him and was squinting at the packages of breath mints. "…I've never broken up with someone before."

Ryan stared at her. "Really?"

Kelly nodded. "In high school, my boyfriend and I kind of just drifted apart and decided together that we'd be better off if we weren't a couple anymore. My boyfriend in college ended up getting into medical school in England, so we decided a long distance relationship wasn't our thing. Stuff like that always happened, and I never had to dump anyone on my own before."

The corner of her mouth hitched up. "I should talk to Pam. She's, like, the Queen of all Dumpings since she gave Roy his ring back. Like, twice, almost, because they got back together. She _really_ knows the right way to break up with a guy."

"You'll find a way," Ryan heard himself say. It was awkward to be having this conversation from her, but it didn't diminish the smug satisfaction he felt knowing that Darryl would soon be getting the boot. "…Doing it sooner rather than later is probably better…"

That might have been pushing it.

Thankfully, Kelly was a little too distracted right now to notice, and she kept jiggling those coins together in her hand. "I don't know what to say. I hate saying things like this. I hate ending things. Endings are the worst."

Had he stopped to think about it, Ryan would have grasped the subtext. He would have put those words together with the fact that Kelly never dumped anyone, with the fact that she stayed with him even though she was secretly unhappy, with the fact that she liked to watch the same few romantic comedies over and over again, with the fact that her sister had died and Kelly never talked about it.

But Ryan wasn't interested in the subtext at the moment and was focused on how to quickly and efficiently get Darryl out of the picture. It wasn't even all about Kelly, even though getting her back was a big part of it. He just hated Darryl. Darryl represented every single insecurity he had about himself, and though he'd never admit it out loud, it intimidated him that Kelly had started dating the warehouse foreman so soon after they'd split.

"I guess…um…" He scratched the back of his head and thought about it. "Be firm and clear, but be gentle, too."

Something cold glittered in her eyes and she tilted her head toward him. "You mean, like you were? Is this another lesson from the Ryan Howard Playbook of Looooove?"

It was her turn to sneer that word, the word she would never believe he ever associated with her, and Ryan snapped his mouth shut, knowing instantly that he'd lost.

"You're right," Kelly sniffed, "I'll just go down to the warehouse right now and walk up to him and say, 'you and I are done.' It'll totally work."

She scoffed and turned to move past him, noticing the cameraman that stood in the doorway looking all too interested in their conversation. "And I'll take the camera with me."

Still seething, she slapped the two quarters against his chest and turned on her heel, stalking out of the room.

"Asshole."


	2. Chapter 2

**Note – **So I made a huge, glaring error last time. I had Jim and Pam coming into the break room. Since Ryan is still an administrative assistant, obviously, Pam is still in New York. Can we pretend that I said Phyllis and Stanley almost entered the room? K thx bai. :-P What a great way to start off a story, yeah? Jeez.

**2. Tell if someone is lying.**

**[I mean, I'm not a slut, but who knows?]**

A week had passed since Kelly had dumped Darryl, and she hadn't spoken to Ryan since. Frankly, he couldn't take it anymore: he actually _wanted_ to sit around and listen to her prattle on about how Paris Hilton and Stavros Niarchos might be getting back together because _he was totally whispering to her in those pictures and tucking her hair behind her ear and that's what people do when they still have feelings for each other, duh, Ryan, and ohmigosh, he is soooo cute and so rich and what girl wouldn't want that over a tattooed gnome like Benji Madden? What kind of name is that anyway? Even though his brother Joel is so hot and such a good father, you can tell because he and Nicole hardly seem to go anywhere without Harlowe and that's totally how we'll be when we have kids of our own and – Ryan, where are you going?_

Yeah. He missed that.

There was definitely something fundamentally wrong with him.

When he was in prison, he used to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling and hearing her voice. They got newspapers fairly regularly and out of habit, he always read the society pages after he finished with the business section. That got him mocked mercilessly by the other guys, but his cellmate seemed to sense that there was something else behind that curious habit of his and used to take care to grab the paper for him if he couldn't get it himself.

Sometimes he'd hear her voice, and sometimes he'd make up conversations in his head with her. They were conversations that they had ("Usher Jennifer Hudson Kapoor,"), conversations they pointedly did _not_ have ("So, Ryan, do you see us with six kids or just three?"), and conversations they could have had (those were private, locked away in his mind). And Kelly always said 'totally' and 'ohmigod' a lot and it made him feel closer to home.

And now that he was back at Dunder Mifflin, he had expected to slip seamlessly back into that rhythm. He'd done his best: he had apologized for the way he acted, he tried to get back in her good graces, and he'd done his best to ignore the fact that at the end of the day, she went home with Darryl.

God, how he loathed that guy. Darryl Philbin represented every single insecurity Ryan ever had about himself. For one thing, he was tall. For another, kind of stating the obvious, he was black. (God, he shouldn't have laughed at Kelly when she told him she was dating "a lot of guys – mostly black guys.") He was calm, self-assured, unhurried, smooth, and had nothing to prove to anyone. And he was naturally talented at basketball _and_ understood all the rules instead of just pretending to. He had a steady job that he'd worked for the past ten years, he had a kid, he was well grounded, and he was perfectly stable.

Plus, he had Kelly, which just meant that Ryan couldn't have hated him any more if he tried.

And that, really, was why he didn't even feel badly about it when he seduced her away from the warehouse foreman.

Granted, the first time had been kind of a fluke. He was at Poor Richard's, sitting in his favorite booth way in the back, drinking and trying to forget about his crappy week. A couple other people from the office were there – Andy and Oscar, being surprisingly chummy, Phyllis and Bob, being completely married, Jim and Pam, being disgustingly engaged and happy on the rare weekend that Pam got to come home – but he didn't feel like joining any of them. He barely liked those people. There had been a time when he and Jim had been pretty good friends, and he and Pam had been known to strike up a few conversations that didn't have to do with paper or Michael's idiocy, but that was a thing of the past.

So he sat in the back, ignored and forgotten and completely okay with that, downing a beer and that was how she found him. Kelly knew his favorite place in the pub and had spotted him instantly. She had been planning on grabbing a drink with Pam and Jim but said she felt bad seeing him sit by himself, and Ryan didn't graciously tell her to forget him and go back to her friends.

What he did do, however, was order her a 7&7.

With eight maraschino cherries.

Sugar on the rim.

Blended if you can.

And he could not have been more surprised when she laughed that off and said she just wanted a beer instead, so that was what he got her. He got her one, and then another, and then another, and they sat together in the booth for so long that he lost all track of time. All he remembered was that he was in somewhat of a bad mood but she was making it better, and he was making some not-so-funny jokes but she was still smirking at him anyway, even though she _knew_ those jokes weren't funny, she just knew it, he was sure of it, and the next thing he knew he was putting money on the table and they were leaving together.

Somehow, they wound up back at his place. It was closer to Poor Richard's, anyway. He had his hand on her thigh all the way home, and then they were kissing all the way up the walk, and then he had her pressed up against his door so that when he finally got it unlocked, they practically fell on top of each other into the foyer. They lost their clothes somewhere along the narrow hallway leading to his single bedroom, right across from the single bath, and everything was hot and soft and fast and incredible, and then slow and gentle and still.

The next morning had been incredibly awkward, but he got her to stay long enough for them to have coffee together, and then he drove her back to her place and fought the uneasiness that settled low in the pit of his stomach when she didn't look at him as she climbed out, when she didn't wave before disappearing behind her door, when she didn't call or text him over the weekend, and when she barely said two words to him on the following Monday.

But they'd managed to get over the awkwardness and she very kindly explained to him that she was with Darryl and she didn't plan on breaking up with him, and that what happened between them was a mistake that she wanted to forget and just move past, and that she hoped he agreed. And because, really, he had no other viable option, Ryan readily did so.

The next time they slept together, it was because he actively seduced her. And he had to admit, it was incredible. He was so used to being chased around by her that he never realized how much fun it was to chase her. He flirted with her relentlessly, feeling a little thrill every time she blushed or shot him one of her cute, bewildered smiles when she couldn't believe he just _said that_. He made her coffee in the morning at work and dropped by her cubicle occasionally to talk to her about the most random, inane things he could think of, and Ryan loved that she was completely thrown off by it.

He was so wrapped up in the little game he was playing with her – and with himself – that Ryan didn't even realize how deep into it he was until he entered the annex and heard Phyllis and Meredith talking in the break room about how the two of them were just like Jim and Pam from a few years ago, with their secret smiles and inside jokes and oblivious flirting.

And amazingly enough, that remark _didn't_ terrify him.

It only let him know that his plan was working.

Just like Pam used to set out jellybeans and hard candies for Jim, Ryan started setting out magazines. _Vogue, People, Cosmopolitan_, anything with a pretty girl in a prettier dress on the front was sure to bring Kelly around. And sure enough, she started taking her breaks up there at reception, grabbing one of the magazines and taking it to the couch, where they talked and laughed and flirted while Jim made a never-ending series of weird faces at the camera.

And then, just like that, he'd kissed her in the parking lot.

It was after everyone else had gone home and it was just the two of them. He was walking her to her car because she'd offered to give him a lift home since his car was in the shop and he'd had a buddy drop him off in the morning, and she was talking about Madonna and Guy Ritchie's divorce and her affair with A-Rod, and he just kissed her. Backed her up against the passenger door and kissed her.

And in his head, he heard her voice: _Ryan, what took you so long?_

She didn't ask him that question when they finally pulled apart, and instead looked up at him wide, starry eyes. Ryan rested his forehead against hers, playing with a lock of her silky hair, and heard himself ask her in a voice that was surprisingly husky to come home with him.

In the end, they'd gone to her place. The familiar scent of cinnamon and fennel hit him as soon as the door opened, and he couldn't explain the relief he felt when he saw that everything looked the same. Her apartment was just as pretty, just as comforting, just as _Kelly_ as it ever was.

This time, it was she who took his hand and pulled him to her, and Ryan kissed her with everything he had just in case she changed her mind and asked him to leave. She'd never kicked him out of her place before and he wouldn't let her think to do so now. He spent the whole night at her place, wrapped up in her arms and her pale pink bed sheets, and he'd beaten his own personal record when they hit the four-times mark.

She wasn't in bed with him when he woke up. And Ryan told himself that he shouldn't have been surprised by that. Kelly barely offered him coffee after he came out of the room, dressed once again in his wrinkled clothes from the night before. She barely looked at him, barely spoke to him, and before long he found himself locked outside her apartment, trudging wearily to his car, wondering if this emptiness and futility was what she felt every time he rushed her out of his apartment in the morning.

The next day he'd confronted her when she came into the break room, but she'd snapped at him and walked out, leaving him conflicted. He was glad that she was breaking up with Darryl, but he knew he was hardly on her good side.

And now it had been a whole week and they still weren't talking. He knew she blamed him for what had happened, but he also knew that she did that just because it was easier for her to do that than blame herself. He was a much easier target, and Ryan had to admit that the blame was probably long overdue.

Still, there was a limit. He could let her stew for a reasonable period of time, but this wasn't getting them anywhere. She was becoming more and more withdrawn and sullen, and he was just plain frustrated. It was the exact opposite of before, when they used to laugh and flirt like crazy, when it felt like they were even closer than they had been when they were actually dating, if it was at all possible.

She was at her desk, going through her files. He saw stacks and stacks of old customer surveys and knew she was separating them all out. Every so often, Kelly pulled the older reviews from her cabinets and organized them and tagged them, and then put them in the larger file cabinets in the storage room, which was basically an office a bit larger than Michael's that held backup files and computers and whatever they hardly used anymore. He'd promised her last week that he'd help move all that stuff in there when she was ready.

"Hey."

Kelly glanced up at him as he rested his arm on the cubicle wall and nodded before returning to her files.

Ryan drummed his fingers on the wall. "We have to talk."

She didn't look up at him again. "About what?"

"You know about what." He waited, but it didn't elicit any sort of reaction. "Kelly."

She hissed and smacked the folder down on top of the largest stack in front of her. "What?"

Ryan shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to figure out the best way to proceed. He had no idea what that was, unfortunately, so he settled for the most blunt explanation possible.

"Let's get back together."

Kelly stared at him, her expression inscrutable. "…Why?"

He didn't like the edge of suspicion and distrust in her voice. "Because."

She rolled her eyes and returned to her work. "That's not an answer."

"Because…because you're not with Darryl anymore. And I'm not with anyone either."

He wondered if, on some level, she knew that was the best he could do right now. Kelly had her back toward him and he could see her stiffen, could practically see her processing his words and trying to figure out whether to give in or tell him to screw off.

"Kel."

Her head turned just a fraction of an inch.

"We've…always been together," he shrugged. "Practically the whole time we worked here together."

She was silent for a long moment and Ryan couldn't figure out whether she planned to actually answer him or not. And just when he was starting to think that he was making a hopeless ass of himself, she turned around and leveled him with a hard look.

"I don't want to be in a relationship with you."

The words were said crisply, plainly, without a hint of malice, but he still winced. It was such a matter-of-fact statement, so simple, so clear, and it was definitely something that she should have told him the first time they were together. Their relationship wasn't fair to her, and it wasn't what either of them had wanted. He just wanted someone to fool around with, and she just wanted someone to marry and have children with. They could not have been a more mismatched couple if they had tried.

He nodded jerkily, trying to process how neatly he'd been dismissed, but Kelly wasn't done. She folded her arms across her chest, cleared her throat, and then unfolded her arms and refolded them again the opposite way. This piqued his interest, because it was one of her specific tells, one of the best ways to tell when she was lying.

"If we get back together, we're not going to do that…" she waved her hand in the air, "…_relationship_ thing again."

His eyes narrowed and Ryan moved closer, keen to figure out just what was going on in her head. "Okay…"

Kelly fidgeted under his penetrating gaze and reached for one of the smaller stacks of files, picking it up and stacking it on top of another one, almost as if she was building a little wall between them.

"If we get back together, we'll just be…hanging out." She added another stack to the growing pile, and the files reached her chest. This amused him. "Nothing serious. Nothing long-term. Just…"

"Hanging out," he finished smugly, successfully hiding a smile when she added yet another few folders to the growing stack. Kelly was definitely lying, but he knew that she needed to believe what she was saying, at least for now.

Because the Kelly Kapoor he knew, the Kelly Kapoor he was certain still existed, was absolutely incapable of a no-strings attached relationship. She just didn't have it in her. And that was why he knew she was lying, that she still had feelings for him, that they still had something they could build on.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Just hanging out."

Ryan smiled and moved closer, hearing her breath catch in her throat as he did so. He kept his gaze locked with hers, blue eyes sparkling, and nodded back. "Sounds good."

Kelly swallowed, her eyes nervously darting to the files between them as he drew nearer, so close that she could smell his aftershave, so close that she almost thought he was going to lean in and kiss her. Ryan smirked and reached down to pick up the files she had been stacking on her desk.

"Let me just get these out of your way."

He heard her let out a whooshing breath when he pulled away, carrying the massive stack to the back office, and Ryan Howard had never been more proud of himself. And then, when he was finally out of her sight, he let out a hiss and adjusted his grip – because, damn, those files were heavy. Those pushups hadn't helped as much as he'd hoped.


	3. Chapter 3

**Note – **Sorry for continuity errors. I swear, I just suck at life this month. And again, this story is just fluff. Far more list-focused than anything else, just because I wanted to see if I could weave together 75 imperatives into a Ryan/Kelly story. :-P

**3. Take a photo. Fill the frame.**

**[Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates.]**

Kelly was at reception, idly flipping through an old copy of _Elle_ (he'd gotten lazy about switching out new copies after she'd agreed to get back with him again) as he answered the phones, and Ryan was afraid she'd get whiplash when she turned around all of a sudden when Jim entered the office.

He smiled at her instantly, seeing the expectant look in her eyes, and lifted his black satchel. "I've got it. It's good as new."

"Oh, my God!" Kelly clapped her hands and hopped up and down a little. "It is? You got it fixed?"

"I got it fixed," Jim grinned back, motioning for her to follow him to his desk. "My buddy at Precision said there was just a little grit jamming the lens. If it happens again, just blow a couple times, real quick, on here, real close in there, and it should do the trick."

"That's what she said," Michael called as he sailed into his office, laughing on his way in. "God, it never gets old."

Jim shot the camera a look and then pointed to the battery dock. "And he saw that you were using alkalines, so he replaced them with these. He said alkaline batteries don't give you that much power and they burn out real quick after, like, just a couple pictures."

Kelly was paying rapt attention. "Cool, how do they work?"

"They're rechargeable, so they'll take about a hundred pictures with every charge…"

"I need this faxed to that address." Ryan looked over as Dwight approached with a small packet of papers. "Immediately, please, I have a busy day and can't baby sit you to make sure you do it."

He grumbled something under his breath and took the papers from him, moving over to the fax machine. Even though his back was toward him, Ryan could still hear Dwight drumming his fingers impatiently on the counter.

"So. Are you really back with Kelly?"

He sighed and fed the first sheet through. "Yeah."

Dwight was nodding, bobbing his head in that awkward, self-important way of his. "That's probably a good move. The Indian race has quite a few medical traits that are superior to the Caucasion race; you're smart to take advantage of that. Thicker and healthier hair, for one thing. At least you know that Kelly won't be bald when she's eighty."

Ryan fed the second sheet through the fax machine. "Yeah, there's that."

"Low likelihood of skin cancers due to darker pigmentation, and extremely low rates of Alzheimer's due to a diet containing turmeric," Dwight continued thoughtfully. "Also, their culture values the birthing of many children per family unit. Good for the survival of the race, having all those offspring running around. Better chance of at least some of them making it through the monsoon season."

He clenched the papers in his fists, hearing the paper crinkle loudly, and didn't trust himself to respond. Dwight flipped through the magazine that sat open on the counter, scoffing at the half-naked and gawkishly tall models in the advertisements (he liked his women petite and modestly dressed, thank you) and waited for it to go through.

"I just hope she doesn't end up crying under her desk when you guys break up again." The salesman sounded bored, but Ryan was suddenly interested and actually turned around to listen to him. "That was horrendous. All the salesmen had to handle our own customer service calls because Kelly wouldn't come out from under her desk. And she put absolutely no work into her appearance, and it was off-putting."

"Kelly cried under her desk?" he asked, only stuffing another sheet into the machine when Dwight pointedly arched a brow at him. "…For how long?"

He shrugged, not looking terribly concerned. "A couple weeks. She was entirely useless. Wouldn't come out. Wouldn't eat. Wouldn't answer the phones. Wouldn't socialize during the properly designated time slots. She just lay curled up under her desk and yelled that she didn't want to talk about you whenever anyone came to drop something off at her desk. I tried to make it so that she wouldn't get her paycheck for those weeks, and that she would pay the company rent for that time instead, since she just spent it taking up space, but Jim vetoed it and wouldn't let me take it up with Michael. I calculated how much she cost the company for that little pity party, and I'm going to request that it's subtracted from her year-end bonus. It's only fair."

"Of course," Ryan murmured, barely hearing that last part. He couldn't picture the normally gregarious and peppy Kelly curled up under her desk like Dwight was saying. And for weeks after he left?

"You said this went on for…?"

"I think a couple weeks," he shrugged. "She was better after Darryl asked her out. That's when she got rid of your pictures, when he made a move on her. Now that could have been a potentially dangerous match: African Americans and Indians have among the highest rates of heart disease out of all the races. Put them together and it's like…whoo. Pulmonary Chernobyl."

Ryan made a face, knowing that there was no reason that any normal person would ever use that phrase, and pushed on. "She had pictures of me? Still? Where, on her desk?"

"Yeah, two of them, I think. There's one more page after that." He waited as Ryan fed it into the machine, only continuing when he was satisfied that it had been done right. "Propped up against her keyboard so that she could see them. I tried to take them away from her during the whole under-the-desk phase, but she almost bit me. And then Darryl asked her out and I saw them in the trash a couple days later. Thanks, I'll take those."

Ryan absently handed him the report and watched Dwight walk away, his thoughts still on Kelly allegedly huddled under her desk and refusing to come out. He knew back then that the break up would be hard on her, but he always figured that she'd mope for a week and then be back to normal. After all, she liked her job, she liked the people she worked with, and she liked Scranton. She had family and friends here, and she was hardly alone when he left.

But Dwight had no reason to lie to him, much less about Kelly, so it had be true.

He watched her standing at Jim's desk, happily inspecting her digital camera that he'd gotten one of his friends to fix for her. She must have felt his gaze on her because she turned and looked over at him, looking confused for a moment. Before, she would have darted over to him immediately and showed off her good-as-new camera before insisting that he took a half dozen glamour shots with her, some of them serious, some of them cute, and some of them just silly. Now, she seemed to be deliberating whether she wanted to come show him anything at all.

He saved her from that by tipping his head at her. "What've you got there?"

Kelly held up the camera and walked over, still fiddling with the lens. "My camera. I kept getting this weird lens error, and I was going to go get a new one but then Jim said that his friend was good at camera repair and stuff and that he'd take it to him. And it totally works again!"

"Yeah?" Ryan held out his hand. "Lemme see."

She happily handed it over and grabbed the magazine that Dwight had left open, shutting it and putting it with the others. "He saved me, like, $200. I thought for sure the thing was just busted. That's what my dad said – he offered to get me a new one because I was kind of bummed about it."

Naturally, he would. Her parents were filthy rich and only too happy to spoil their oldest daughter.

"Looks good," Ryan allowed, still working the gadget as he came around the counter and sidled up next to her. "You try it out?"

"What?" She was eyeing him warily, wondering why his arm was reaching out and slipping around her waist. "No, I-"

"You should always try your things out, make sure they work," he told her, pulling her into his side as he held up the camera to get the shot. "Smile."

Confused though she was, Kelly managed to flash a grin at the last second, and Ryan studied the picture they'd just taken. "Not bad."

She was staring at him again. "Ryan, wh-"

"Kelly?" Michael poked his head out of his office. "There you are. I need the evaluations you pulled from the high school and the municipal center. Now, please."

"Oh, sure." She pushed herself away from the counter, leaving the camera with him. "I'll go get them."

Michael nodded and disappeared into his office, and Ryan slipped back around the counter and into his seat. It was a slow morning, so he took the USB cord from the little camera bag and plugged it into his computer. It only took twenty seconds for Windows to download the correct drivers for it and before long he had the picture pulled up on the screen. By the time Kelly returned with the forms for Michael, he'd already attached the JPEG file in an email and sent it to her.

And, not entirely knowing why and not anywhere close to ready to dealing with it, Ryan saved a copy in his My Pictures folder, telling himself it was just for backup in case she lost hers.


End file.
